Over at No Minister Psych Milt asks the following question?
The above isn't really what's bemusing me about the hysteria over the candidates on NZ right-wing blogs, though. What's bemusing about it is that it's all, at the bottom line, utterly and completely irrelevant to us. For most NZers, their level of self esteem would be unable to cope with the knowledge of just how deeply and conclusively unimportant we are to the USA. We not only don't have a horse in this race, there is absolutely nothing for us whatsoever in this race. We are equally unimportant to both candidates, and I'd be willing to bet the Republican Veep candidate has never even heard of us. So why all the fuss, guys?
Actually while we are largely irrelevant to them, they are very relevant to us. We can't afford another disaster US President and Obama is quite obviously going to be a disaster. We also can't afford to be frozen out of the US economy much longer. And McCain will deliver an FTA for New Zealand. We don't know about Obama. We also need strong leadership on world trade. Obama is already saying very worrying things on world trade. McCain will give us the leadership we need. Anything that can help McCain get there is good for New Zealand. Pailin is therefore good for New Zealand. Finally there was the little matter of the NZ media being suckered into anti-Palin stories put out by the Democrats in the run up to her convention speech. There needed to be some balance. Unfortunately there no equivalent to Fox in the New Zealand media. Blogspace had to provide that balance.
